** Apologies for Cross-Posting **
The UK -- which had the undisputed leadership of the world
in
setting Open Access policy worldwide -- may now be losing
that
lead, allowing itself instead to get needlessly side-tracked
and
bogged down in irrelevant diversions and digressions,
designed
solely to delay the optimal and inevitable (and obvious, and
already long overdue).
Peter Suber's comments (quoted below) are spot-on, and say
it
all. The ball, already dropped by NIH in the US and perhaps
now
by the RCUK in the UK too, will now pass to the European
Commission
http://europa.eu.int/c
omm/research/science-society/pdf/scientific-publication-stud
y_en.pdf
and -- more importantly -- to the distributed network of
individual universities and other research institutions
worldwide. The leaders now are the institutions that have
not sat
waiting for national funder mandates in order to go ahead
and
mandate OA self-archiving, but have already gone ahead and
mandated it themselves:
http://www
.eprints.org/signup/fulllist.php
What we should remind ourselves is that if the physics
community
-- way back in 1991, and the computer science community from
even
earlier -- had been foolish enough to wait for the outcome
of the
kind of vague, open-ended study now planned by RCUK/RIN,
instead
of going ahead and self-archiving their research, we would
have
lost 500,000 (physics) plus 750,000 (computer science) OA
articles'-worth of research access, usage and impact for
the past
decade and a half.
The Wellcome Trust -- http://www.we
llcome.ac.uk/node3302.html --
has had the vision and good sense to go ahead and mandate
what
had already empirically demonstrated its positive benefits
for
research with no negative effects on publishing on the basis
of
15+ years worth of objective evidence.
The RCUK seems to prefer endless open-ended dithering...
-- Your Impatient
Archivangelist
-----------
Excerpted from Peter Suber's Open Access News
http://www.earlham.edu/~pete
rs/fos/2006_04_23_fosblogarchive.html#114605658767880491
The RCUK has announced an Analysis of data on scholarly
journals
publishing to be undertaken jointly with the RIN
(Research
Information Network) and DTI (Department of Trade and
Industry).
http:
//www.rin.ac.uk/?q=data-scholarly-journals
Comments by Peter Suber:
"(1) The RCUK has not said whether it will wait
to announce the
final version of its OA policy until the new study is
complete and
fully digested. But it looks as though it will. It
looks as though
the voices calling for delay have prevailed.
"(2) Remember that the RCUK's draft OA policy --
http://www.rcu
k.ac.uk/access/index.asp -- is already
based on extensive fact-finding from the House of
Commons
Science and Technology Committee and summarised in its
well-known report, "Scientific Publications: Free
For All?":
http://www.publications.parliam
ent.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/39903.htm
"(3) The only relevant evidence not yet unearthed
by previous
studies is on the effect of high-volume OA archiving on
journal
subscriptions -- outside physics, where we already know
that
high-volume OA archiving is either harmless or
synergistic with
journal subscriptions. But we cannot gather evidence on
this question
until we stimulate high-volume OA archiving in a field
other than
physics, e.g. by adopting a policy something like the
RCUK's draft OA
policy. Let's get on with it, adopt the policy,
monitor the effects
carefully, and be prepared to amend as needed.
"(4) Why does the list of "all the key
stakeholders" omit researchers
and universities?"
-- Peter
Suber, OA News
http://www.earlham.edu/~pete
rs/fos/2006_04_23_fosblogarchive.html#114605658767880491
----
Excerpts from the RCUK announcement:
"This study got off the ground in mid-April 2006
and should conclude
by the middle of summer. It is being undertaken on
behalf of the
three joint funders by Electronic Publishing Services
Ltd (EPS), in
association with Loughborough University Department of
Information
Science. The aim is to assist in UK domestic
policy-making, by
reviewing information about scholarly journal
publishing, assessing
the data available about the process and the
reliability of that data.
"The main purpose of the study is to gain more
reliable information
about the operation of the journal publishing aspects
of the
scholarly communications process and its costs. The
study focuses
specifically on journal publishing, but it should be
viewed in the
context of a projected body of work involving all key
stakeholders
in the context of the scholarly communications
framework. This is
likely to include related but separate studies of other
aspects of
scholarly communications, including for instance the
development,
funding and viability of digital repositories.
"The key objective of the project is to provide
the three sponsors of
the study, and other stakeholders in the scholarly
journals industry,
with an accurate review of reliable and objective
information about
the journals publishing process....
"Scholarly journal publishing is a key component
of the spectrum
of functions and activities that form part of the
scholarly
communications process. This has been the focus of
much interest
lately, in particular because of the considerable
interest generated
by recent debates on open access. Although this level
of debate has
provided a welcome opportunity to consider challenges
relating to the
dissemination of research outputs, it has also been
characterised by
a degree of mutual suspicion and misunderstanding
stemming from the
often conflicting positions of the different actors and
stakeholders
with an interest in these issues. There has also been
tension over
the quality and completeness of the information and
data that the
different stakeholders have used in support of their
respective
positions. As a result of these tensions and
suspicions, it has
been difficult to achieve a consensus on how best to
exploit
the potential of new technology for enhancing the
scholarly
communications process and its cost-effectiveness.
This has had
implications for the development of public policy, as
evidenced by
the debates surrounding the Wellcome Trust's policy on
open access,
and the delay in agreeing a definitive RCUK position
statement.
"In this context, there is a clear need for
objective information that
all stakeholders can agree upon as a means of defining
and achieving
common goals in scholarly communications. The
DTI-sponsored Research
Communications Forum has provided a useful arena for
the exchange of
information and views. The recently-created scholarly
communications
group facilitated by the RIN will work collaboratively
to identify key
issues in scholarly communications and gaps in our
understanding,
and to develop a better, evidence-based understanding
of these
issues - for instance, the development, funding and
viability of
digital repositories - as a basis for informing public
policy.
This group includes representatives of all the key
stakeholders
(notably the Research Councils, the library community,
publishers,
the RIN and key Government Departments such as the DTI
and OST).
The current study, focused on scholarly journal
publishing - which
has been the focus of some of the more lively debate -
will be timely
contribution to the development of understanding in the
field of
scholarly communications as a whole."
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